


i've been the archer, i've been the prey

by askmeaboutmyoctopustheory



Series: Winterhawk Bingo [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Enemies to Friends, Evil Queen Maria Hill, James "Bucky" Barnes is Mad Hatter | Jefferson, M/M, Magic, Witch Hunter Clint, Witch Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 03:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20594279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/askmeaboutmyoctopustheory/pseuds/askmeaboutmyoctopustheory
Summary: the witch hunters are sent to bring in the mad hatter, but a mishap with portal jumping sends one of the hunters to a new realm with the hatter





	i've been the archer, i've been the prey

**Author's Note:**

> hahahaha i do what i want with characters and canon
> 
> so pretty much this is jeremy renner's witch hunter hansel/sebstans mad hatter because the ~aesthetic~
> 
> i don't know why i made maria hill evil i love her 
> 
> its been a second since i watched ouat and i've never seen hansel and gretel witch hunters but
> 
> find me on twitter @_AMAMOT
> 
> square fill: meet ugly

Clint honestly didn’t believe it when Natasha told him that they had been summoned to the castle. He supposed Royal summons meant they had truly made a name for themselves. 

“What can we do for you, Maria?” He asked as they approached the throne.

“That’s  _ Queen _ Maria to you, witch hunter.” The queen just looked down at him with an arched eyebrow.

“Your majesty, what can we do for you?” Natasha cut in, shooting Clint a sideways glance. “Is there a witch in this area you wish for us to kill?”   
  
“Well. Of sorts.” Maria started. “Mirror!”   
  
Her magic mirror’s face faded out and showed a milliner in his shop. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the man. 

“The Mad Hatter.” Maria said simply. 

“He’s a witch?” Clint frowned.   
  
“He’s a portal jumper, he can travel through time and space. Is that not enough for you?” She snapped, her guards suddenly at attention. “I will compensate you handsomely for bringing him alive.”   
  
Natasha looked at Clint sideways and they had a silent conversation.

“Alive?” Natasha clarified. “Hunters don’t really uh-”   
  
“We usually kill ‘em on sight.”   
  
“You don’t usually work for royalty, now do you.” Maria threw a bag of gold onto the ground. “You will receive the rest when you bring me the Mad Hatter. Alive!”

“Guess they don’t call her the Evil Queen for nothin’” Clint remarked as they were escorted out of the gates. He plucked an apple out of a tree as they passed and bit into it. “So, how we doin’ this?”

\-----

Bucky knew that the witch hunters were coming for him. Despite their infamy, they weren’t necessarily subtle. They strode into town and announced that they were there to kill witches, pretty blatant but nobody asked him. He clenched the golden arm that Maria’s magic welders had made for him. They had been allies a few years ago, until she double-crossed him and he had barely escaped. Apparently his good luck had run out. 

Bucky was  _ technically _ a witch, but he didn’t really practice. The portals from his hats were a different magic than the witch hunters were familiar with. He wouldn’t be killed by dismemberment or their magic weapons, others had already tried that. But he still didn’t want a fight.

So he set a trap. He set his hat in the middle of the room, planning to send the hunters through the portal to a land with different magical properties. Who knew if they would be able to use their weapons or skills there? 

The shit hit the fan when the magic arrow struck his golden arm and sent him off balance, just enough time for one of the hunters to grab him right as he was setting his hat into motion.

“If you’re gonna kill me, just do it already.” Bucky growled out as he tried to shake off the man gripping his arm. The other hunter was nowhere to be seen, maybe he had walked right into their own trap.

“I haveta keep you alive” The man growled back at him.

Bucky’s hat was spinning quickly now, the portal opening to another world. He used his not insignificant strength to push against the hunter and try to sling him towards the open portal. The hunter was strong and they both fell into the portal, kicking at each other and Bucky managed to grab the edge of the warping reality. But the other man was too heavy for Bucky to keep clinging to the edge of where his hat had opened and they fell down into the bright oblivion. 

\----

Bucky managed to land on his feet, used to the rush and tumble of jumping between worlds in his hat. But the hunter was flopped face down in the grass. Bucky picked up his hat and dusted it off before putting it on his head for safekeeping and pushing the slumped hunter with his toe.

“Wha- What? Where are we?” The man seemed to have come to and startle at the bright sunlight. “The mad hatter?”   
  
“Depends who you ask I guess.” Bucky said sarcastically, knowing the man had been sent by the queen. He stuck out a hand to help him up “Just call me Bucky.”   
  
“‘M Clint.” The man heaved himself up and looked Bucky up and down. “Where the hell are we? Why the hell are we here?”   
  
“Well I had  _ planned _ to send you and the other hunter through this portal and then escape in another hat’s portal.” Bucky looked put out. “But then your arrow hit my metal arm and everything went sideways.”   
  
“You have a metal arm!?” Clint was admittedly missing the point of this narrative but he had just realized Bucky had a solid gold arm. “Castle forged?”   
  
“Yep” Bucky popped the ‘p’ and flexed the gleaming metal in the sun. “The mad queen made it for me when I still worked for her. After she ripped off my flesh one.”   
  
“Brutal.”   
  
“Yeah.” Bucky said, adjusting his hat. “Anyway. We gotta look for a beanstalk. A bean will get my hat spinning again.”   
  
“Man, magic is weird.” Clint remarked. “Can we wait until tomorrow?”

“What, you scared of the dark?” Bucky snapped at him. They stood facing each other for a beat, glaring intensely. “Fine. We can find a place to make camp for the night. Tomorrow you have to do everything as I tell you to if you want to get back to our realm.”

“Always wanted to go camping with the Mad Hatter.” Clint muttered again as Bucky began trekking into the heavy woods near where they had landed. “Hey where are you goin?”   
  
“Finding some sort of shelter?” 

“You do this sorta thing often?” 

“You don’t exactly go on the run from the evil queen and stay in roadside inns.” Bucky snarked at him. “We’re lucky it’s not hibernation season, we can probably make camp in a cave or something.”   
  
“Bears?” Clint squeaked out. 

“Are you always this much of a wuss?”   
  
“Hey!” Clint protested. “I normally have my partner with me, who I trust a hell of a lot more than you.”   
  
Bucky frowned. “I think I’m the one who has founded trust issues in this situation since you were literally sent to kill me.”   
  
“Well we can just both not trust each other.”   
  


Bucky just rolled his eyes and kept walking. They walked in silence for what seemed like hours, the sun falling in the sky and Clint keeping his bow drawn for anything that might cross their path. Somehow, Bucky had found a shallow cave that they could both sleep for the night.

“You gonna make yourself useful and get us somethin to eat?” Bucky snapped as Clint watched him clear off the flat area in front of the cave.

“Oh- I. Yeah.” Clint gestured back out to the woods with his bow and retreated hastily.

When he returned there was a pile of sticks arranged in a circle of rocks for a fire and Bucky was sharpening another stick with appeared to be his bare metal hand.

“Oh I thought you’d gotten lost.”

“I’m not as dumb as I look.” Clint snapped as he dumped several shot quail at Bucky’s feet, who wrinkled his nose. “What? You want me to do all the work here?”   
  
Bucky just raised an eyebrow and took off his hat, ran his hand over the card stuck into it and made a sharp gesture towards the fire pit. When Clint looked over, there was a fire burning and the quail were roasting on the sharp stick. Bucky smirked a bit as he put his hat back on.

“You  _ are  _ a witch!” Clint yelled. “Wait, aren’t all witches women?”   
  
“Wow you must get all the ladies.” Bucky said sarcastically. “And yeah I’m technically a witch because I can wield magic, but not very well without the hat. And the hat needs other sources of magic to be magical.”   
  
“That sounds complicated.”   
  
“Witches are, in fact, complicated people.” Bucky said as he sat down on a tree root near the fire. “But you wouldn’t know that since you just kill ‘em.”   
  
“It’s all I’m good at.” Clint shot back, leaning on a tree across the fire. “They killed my entire village except me and Natasha. That’s my partner.”

“I’m aware of who you two are.” 

“Well. We ran away and eventually got picked up by a witch hunter who trained us. Saw that we had that good ‘ol vengeful spirit. We were just kids.”   
  
Bucky’s gut twisted a bit so he got up to poke at the fire. He picked apart the cooked quail using a sharpened stick and his metal hand, putting them on a flat bit of rock he found in the clearing, offering the first bit of food to Clint as a sort of peace offering. The hunter took it without another word and they ate in silence for a bit.

“The queen…” Bucky started out before closing his mouth and reconsidering. “I worked for the queen, in a liberal sense of the word ‘worked’. I was her prisoner and she forced me to jump realms at her every whim.”   
  
“And she cut your arm off?” Clint asked softly. He had heard stories of the ‘mad queen’ and her tendency to cut people’s heads off if they disagreed with her.

“Yeah.” Bucky flexed the golden arm. “I was a lucky one. Anyway, I’m gonna turn in for the night. I can cast a light protection spell over the cave so we can both sleep.”   
  
“Nah, I can stay up on watch for a bit.” Clint waved him off.

Clint didn’t like admitting when he was wrong about someone, he had spent most of his life doing the one thing he considered himself good at. Bucky was right, that he had never actually talked to a witch before. And by his considerations Bucky wasn’t even a witch. He didn’t know what he would do with Bucky when they got back to their home realm, since he was technically still supposed to bring the Hatter in for the queen. But that would be sending Bucky back into certain torture and possible further dismemberment. Clint’s thoughts swirled around in his head as he felt sleep coming over him slumped against the wall of the cave.

\----

Clint woke up with a painful crick in his neck from sleeping sitting up on the hard rock, sunlight streaming into the little clearing in front of the shallow cave they had camped in. Bucky was sitting against the same tree as last night eating something out of his hat.

“Mornin’ sunshine.” Bucky remarked as Clint blinked blearily at him. He tossed what looked like a berry in the air and caught it in his mouth. “I took the liberty of getting breakfast. And I think I can see a beanstalk a ways off.”

Clint wordlessly took a handful of the berries from the top hat and ate them. They were sweet and ripe. 

“So, what? We climb the beanstalk to find more magic beans to power your hat?”   
  
“We shouldn’t have to climb it the whole way up. I don’t feel much like interacting with giants today.” Bucky clarified as he stood up and gestured for them to start walking.

“Right. Giants.”   
  
“Just need a bean to get this spinning and we can go home.”   
  
“Why?” Clint blurted out. Bucky just looked confused. “Why go home? Won’t you just have to live in fear of the queen if we go back?”   
  
“Well yeah. But I’ve been living on the run from the queen for a while now. Nothin’ new there.” Bucky looked at him sideways. “You don’t wanna go back?”

Clint didn’t meet his eyes. “I do, I can’t leave Nat like that. But I--I can’t turn you over to the queen, so we’ll be on the run too.”   
  
“So, what? You want to go on the run with me?” Bucky grinned a bit. 

“I mean. Would that… be ok?” Clint’s voice squeaked a bit. He finally looked up to see the twinkling eyes of the hatter. “Nat wouldn't wanna come with us. She’d just find a nice town to settle into and blend in.”   
  
“Well.” Bucky stopped short and looked up at Clint. He was significantly shorter than the hunter but with his top hat on it didn’t seem that way. “We could just stay here.” He said softly and was he blushing a bit?

“Like not go back at all?”   
  
“Yeah. I can send a message across realms so we can tell your- Natasha where we are. If she wants to join us.” Bucky swallowed. “We’ll still need a bean but I can send her a message and even send her a way to get here if she wants it. We can make a new life here. No queen, no witches.” He was babbling a bit.   
  
“You mean it?” Clint was flabbergasted. 

“Yeah.” Bucky shrugged and bumped their shoulders together. “Just don’t try and kidnap me again.”

“You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”

“Never.”

It sounded like forever to him.


End file.
